


Don't Know Where, Don't Know When

by darkerhue



Series: We'll Meet Again [1]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: More characters to come into play in later chapters, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, multi fic
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2014-05-26
Updated: 2014-07-03
Packaged: 2018-01-26 15:06:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 2
Words: 1,793
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1692710
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/darkerhue/pseuds/darkerhue
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier is a weapon, an asset, human in body only, but he used to be much more.  Running from and trailing after Captain America and Falcon, Winter is on a self-defined mission to learn who he was and who he can be.</p><p>[Part 1 of a tri-fic series]</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Prologue

_It’s okay to be sad.  It’s okay to feel things.  
_ _ \--Jame McGuire (Walking Disaster)_

* * *

 Home used to mean a frozen box and icicle air.  The cold would seep through pores and burrow into bone until his vision failed and turned to frost.  Pressed tight into the chamber, wide enough to accommodate still flesh and muscle and metal only, and sent into a place of nothingness, he felt what could only be peace.  The definition of home, he’d thought.  Peace.  Safety.  Purpose.  A world frozen in temperature and time.   The cold lent clarity to his lungs and calmed his confused mind, and after a time he began to anticipate the box even through the nothingness which came before.  Routine for a well-oiled machine.

_Wipe him first_

Faces changed between extended blinks.  Grey hairs emerged and skin drooped and through it all the Soldier remained.  He was made for them, for their use and their order.  The handlers refreshed themselves as time slipped from him.  Wasn’t it the same for other weapons, though?  Storage units, little cases with snap sides and sensitive circuitry, with their guns and knives inside waited for a new user.  Point the weapon and let it complete the mission.  Put it away again until the next assignment with new hands and sharper tongues.  One face, though, never changed and was never mentioned.  A man with the bluest of eyes and yellow hair.  He carried himself as a smaller, but no less determined man.

“B—y,” he would whisper with a frown.  “Bu— _no_.”  The Soldier used to think it was an assist in his programing, and with no information to the contrary why not?  His existence had been saved by the man on more than one occasion, he could _feel_ the truth of it with every glance, and it seemed reasonable that his handlers would provide him with additional safeguards.  An error, however.  His own, because HYDRA could not be responsible for mistakes.  The image was a fault in his own programming, a problem he should have addressed and divulged to his creators.  They wiped his mind clean after a botched shot and not even the man with golden hair survived.

Home had always been the chair and the ice box and his handlers, but one name shattered his assurance and now here he was.  City noise battered his ears with wailing sirens and loud barks, and he wondered if this had been their life before.  The apartment complex was certainly nicer than his memories seemed to suggest.  The early morning light didn’t snake its way through crumbling brick and old wood and the smell of sweat and dirt came only from himself.  A nicer place with a little restaurant on the side.

The source of his disobedience sat in shining gold on black beside a ‘4’.  _Rogers, Steven_.  The Soldier’s breath rattled as he started up the rich mahogany steps.  One flight and a break to scan out the darkened window.  A second flight after no threats were detected.  Weeks, months maybe though his sense of time had disappeared, of evading the man with the blue suit and now he stood, willingly, at his door.  He shuffled his feet against the worn carpet, planting himself for defence, and raised his hand.

_knock, knock, knock_

After decades of moving through a void, forgetting everything but the feel of a gun in his palm and blood on his fingers, it’d taken only five letters to bring HYDRA’s hard work crashing around their ears.  The Soldier swallowed.  Five letters for one name.  He clenched his fists, shoved them deep into threadbare pockets, and called out HYDRA’s demise with a hoarse voice.

“Steve.”


	2. Escape

Outstanding people have one thing in common: An absolute sense of mission.  
\---Zig Ziglar

        The ground continued to shake with the force of metal and concrete splashing into the river as the sodden path of the Winter Soldier baked in April heat.  Each muddy footprint after the other lengthened, the heel digging deep until the ground hardened and changed to cracked pavement.  He’d been fortunate to escape unseen so far.  His utter failure gave him the cover he needed.  The civilians, obstacles to be avoided, ran from the terror of battle.  Those running toward the crashes and screams hardly knew to look for a man with a metal arm.

        The back trails mapped themselves in his mind as he wove between tall trees with rounded leaves.  It would bring him a block from his safe drop if he took a left and a right and a straight.  The birds returned before he reached the first bend.  The path left widened with each carefully unhurried step.  It would give him a good platform for footing, he thought, and would lessen the chance of a stumble or a trip off the edge.  The sides were crumbling in disarray and he wondered if SHIELD’s headquarters looked the same.  The carrier had crashed into the side, he knew, and sprayed the ground far below with glass like the scattered pebbles to his right.  Chaos and disarray.  It was _his_ job to assist HYDRA in weeding out those who posed a danger to peace.  Like Steve Rogers.

        The Soldier stopped under the shade of a tree, an Oak maybe.  He stared emptily at the dappled way ahead.  Birdsong muffled into the background with passing sirens.  Steve Rogers.  His failure to protect the air ship could have been excused if he’d succeeded in his primary mission.  It was secondary to keep the public containment vehicles flying high, they could always be remade, and singular threats took precedence.  The right man in the right place could change the course of civilization.  One person could send history down the wrong path.  A man like Captain America could tear down everything HYDRA had worked toward.

        He continued forward, leaving wet drips behind him.  The secondary mission was a failure and he’d suffered a glitch when carrying out the primary.  Saving the target had been _wrong_.  He patted his sides to count the weapons still of use as he turned right at the T-junction.  The drop point would have civilian clothing and an arsenal to pick his replacements from.  The Captain thought he knew him, maybe he’d been assigned to a forgotten mission in the past, and he could use that.  Feigning comradery wasn’t a complicated skill.  He sniffed and caught the hint of rain despite the puddles he was sidestepping.  Men like the Captain felt it their duty to take in those in need.  Friendship, submissive compliance.  It would bring him close to the target where he could slide a knife between muscled ribs.

_He’s bigger than he’s supposed to be_

        The thought emerged from nowhere between his rapid fire plotting.  Why should a broad shouldered man be anything but what he was?  The thought left him confused and he stumbled on a loose crack of pavement.  However inconceivable the idea, it _felt_ true.  Captain America was not supposed to be made of muscle and sharp lines.  He was a small man with bad lungs and a wicked, if weak, right hook.  A breeze should threaten to push the man over.  Yet these things don’t match with the target he’d very clearly failed to remove.  And all this because of one sentence.

_I’m with you till the end of the line_

        Those words were his own.  How could the Captain already know them?  His second stumble jarred him back to the world only to realize a large man was blocking his way.

        “Hey… you alright there,” the man asked slowly.  His hand ghosted over the butt of his gun as the Soldier dripped river water.  He took the man in quickly, deciding the badge and crisply pressed suit designated a civil servant of some kind.  Witnesses were to be eliminated at all costs.  A hint could be enough to throw his mission into greater jeopardy.

        “I said you alright?”  He favoured his right leg with a limp and his left pupil dilated differently than the other.  A reserve.  He absently noted the slow approach.  One foot over the other, slow, sure.  An experienced man.  The Soldier glanced to the side, saw nothing in the thin brush there, and raised his own weapon.

        The man reacted with a sharp shout, something in English passed through his ears, so the Soldier let out two quick pops.  The advanced arm shook and whirred.

        It wasn’t a minute later that the Soldier continued forward at the misshapen fork with a jog.  His thoughts had slowed him, given what remained of SHIELD too clear an opening, and he considered the added cost of an additional wipe.  He would be unable to hunt his saved target for hours after, would require an intelligence debriefing again, but it would give him the cleared mind he needed.  Whatever the Captain had said, it _couldn’t_ matter, it had found a weakness in his programming.  An exploitation, he recalled an engineer muttering once.

_You’ve known me your whole life._

        He let out a low growl and harshly tapped the side of his head.  The words meant _nothing_.  Just like the faceless advertisements taped, glued, and re-pasted on the park benches he passed.  The sun disappeared behind a cloud of smoke as he approached the edge of the park.  The streets lay barren ahead of him.  Cars left parked on the side, businesses shuttered against the terror of the inner city’s battle.  The Captain _couldn’t_ know him as they had only met on the mission.  The Captain, as his handlers had said, _lied_.  He hunched his shoulders and stepped into the street.  One block down to the left.  The drop would be there at the dumpster, past a café he was certain the Captain would try to say they’d known all their lives as well.  The crashes still echoed down here.  The buildings themselves seemed to amplify the groan of metal twisting and crumpling.  Whatever kind of civilian life usually teemed here had disappeared completely, and that was just fine with him. 

_… on the sunny side of the street_

        His footsteps echoed hollowly with each movement forward.  The buildings loomed over the walk and he wondered just how many snipers could fit on the roof tops.  A stray cat provided the only other movement on the ground, disturbing a metal can with a bang.  A window covering, lace he thought, flittered out and back into a window.  Just wind, no snipers lying in wait.  The alley itself stank of rotting food and shit, but then it wasn’t meant to attract others to stick around.  He crouched behind the dumpster and twisted a handle beneath.

        By the time he left, soft zip sweater pulled tight around his back, the exploitation had returned.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shorter than I wanted, but this seemed a good place to stop. The more I think of it, the more I'm feeling I'm gonna write the whole fic, let it sit, then go back and rewrite to make it better. So, that means I'm also sorta not proof-reading these? If I start doing that, it'll take me even longer to get chapters out! Which this is really more of a note for myself than for you readers, but eh, why not, right?
> 
> Subscribe, comment, all those things if you so desire!


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